‘...A moving and surprising monument is tucked away in the Museum of Lorraine in Nancy. When Bernard of Clairvaux, the most powerful and prestigious religious figure of his era, marched down the Rhine in 1146, proclaiming what turned out to be the wholly futile Second Crusade, one of those he swept up with his rhetoric was Hugues de Vaudemont, a nobleman who went as part of Louis VII’s doomed army. We do not know who commissioned the carving or why, but here is a statue showing a gaunt, bearded Hugues on his return six years later, staff in hand and cross around his neck. He is being embraced by his wife, Aigeline of Burgundy, who wears an elaborate cloak and has a braid hanging down to her waist. He is patently at the end of his tether; she shows relief and pride.’
from ‘Lotharingia: A Personal History of Europe’s Lost Country’ by Simon Winder
